glh

They never should have hired her. No question that the stores have deteriorated enormously -- customer experience, I have found, is hit or miss lately, and I tend to avoid the Apple Store in the mall. It used to be entirely different and much better, IMO

I just bought a 2017 Nissan Maxima, even though the CR review said the ride made some of their testers feel sick. So, someone eats a bad hamburger for lunch, gets in the car, goes for a ride and feels sick. Others hear his or her complaint and say they feel a bit sick too. So much for objectivity -- actually the ride is smooth, much smoother than the 2017 Camry (rated much higher by CR) we rented. I really think CR's reviews are at the best highly subjective and wonder why so many people pay attention to them. They claim to be unbiased, but I can't accept that -- their ratings depend on the whims of the testers, at least when they're not actually doing scientific testing with instruments (and even then there's room for subjectivity). As far as HomePod testing goes, surely this is 95% subjective. If you get one and really like it, why should you care what some CR tester (who may have had a fight with a colleague an hour before) thinks?